Outside experts come to see how Milwaukee Public Schools is handling something and the result is a report strongly criticizing a core part of what makes education here succeed - or not succeed.

Yes, that was the core of this column a week ago, when the subject was a nationally known expert in special education who said the large majority of MPS schools were not doing well when it comes to reacting to problems students have with reading, math and behavior.

Yes, it was the core of this column four weeks ago when a team of experts called for an urgent overhaul of MPS reading programs.

This is a whole 'nother case, serious enough that it could have a bearing on the way the hot debate about who should control MPS unfolds in coming weeks. That's true not only because the new report is so strongly worded, but because the reaction of School Board members at two meetings last week was so mild.

The subject in this round of outside criticism of MPS is the human resources department, which handles such things as hiring teachers. In many school districts, the effective use of the HR department is a key to building a strong staff, holding people accountable for job performance, providing on-the-job training for employees, and managing a variety of important functions smoothly.

MPS is not one of those places, if you read the report from a team of respected professionals in the HR field.

Superintendent William Andrekopoulos asked the Council of the Great City Schools, a support organization for large urban districts, to send the team to Milwaukee. So the criticism doesn't come from some unwanted busybodies.

The seven-member team - six of them HR professionals in other school districts and the seventh the director of management services for the council itself - concluded that Milwaukee's department doesn't measure up in a long list of things a good HR department should be doing.

And they used the word that has been perhaps most damning in several reports about MPS: Urgency. They said that people they interviewed from the MPS HR department lacked a sense of urgency about serving people better. (This will not come as news to many MPS principals who have complained for years about HR.)

Examples of what the team concluded:

• "The Department of Human Resources' management strategy appeared to be risk aversive and was marked by a weak sense of urgency to improve and little functional concern for customers and stakeholders."

• "The Strategic Support Team saw no evidence that the department is involved in developing strategies that would improve the performance and retention of district employees, support evaluation practices that hold employees accountable for results or help employees develop the skills and knowledge needed for promotion to key leadership positions within schools and departments."

• "There seems to be a pervasive avoidance of responsibility and an aversion to risk among department management."

• "Department processes and practices tend to be slow and cumbersome and contribute to duplicative work, excessive time losses, extensive use of redundant and parallel paper and electronic systems, and risky and inefficient 'work around' methods."

The report's No. 1 recommendation: "Establish a sense of urgency for accomplishing results within the Human Resources Department with expectations and consequences for leaders, managers and staff."

The report's No. 2 recommendation: "Staff the organization only with those individuals who have both the capacity and willingness to make the required changes."

Ouch, ouch, ouch and a few more ouches.

That's not the sounds that were heard, however, from School Board members. At a meeting Tuesday night of the board's finance committee, the report was discussed for about a half hour. Only Peter Blewett asked questions that were challenging. He said most of the complaints he gets about MPS involved the HR department.

Andrekopoulos and HR Director Deborah Ford told the board members that they agreed with a few of the recommendations in the report and disagreed with many. In some cases, they said, the outside team had misconceptions about how things are done in Milwaukee - for example, on-the-job training is done by other departments in MPS.

"We do believe we've made substantial progress," Ford said. "Our department does have a sense of urgency."

Andrekopoulos said MPS is developing a "human capital functional plan" that will address some of the problems the report spotlighted.

At a meeting of the full board on Thursday, all nine members passed on a chance to discuss the report, and it was accepted without comment. In response to the report, Blewett introduced a resolution, to be considered in coming months, that would require giving exit interviews to everyone leaving MPS, creating a process for people who use the services of the HR department to comment on how they were treated, and giving all employees clear job descriptions.

There was no point, at least publicly, at which anyone on the board or in the MPS administration said, 'Man, we've got to make some fundamental changes in how we do this important function' - which is what the report directly called for.

Mayor Tom Barrett stepped in to provide such a call. "I want a culture (at MPS) where success is expected and accountability is the rule of the day," he said. If he were to gain control of MPS, "I would absolutely make that a priority."

He said reading the report angered him and saddened him.

As for the reaction of School Board members, he said, "When you have a report like this . . . and the reaction is to simply place it on a shelf, that's problematic. . . . That pretty much puts an exclamation point on exactly what the report is saying."

This is the third time in four years that a team from the Council of the Great City Schools visited Milwaukee and produced a highly critical report.

In 2006, a team proposed broad changes in the way academic programs were run and criticized the lack of urgency attached to improvement in MPS. Some significant changes, such as returning a lot of decision making from schools to central office, resulted, but the overall impact is not clear.

In 2007, a team looked at the way MPS deals with discipline and behavior issues and said there was a higher rate of suspensions here than perhaps in any other school district in the country, while effective alternatives were not being used. That led to changes in discipline policies that have cut suspensions by about 20%.

What will become of this report? If major changes are coming, you couldn't see much sign of that last week from the people currently at the top of the system.

Alan J. Borsuk is a longtime education reporter in Milwaukee. His pieces on education will run regularly in the Sunday Journal Sentinel. Borsuk can be reached at alanjborsuk@gmail.com.